Long and Short Reviews welcomes Heather Ewings, who is visiting with us today. Leave a comment or ask the author a question for a chance to win a copy of “Maggie and the Selkie,” a short-story prequel to What the Tide Brings, her debut published work. In addition to her novel, she’s written short stories that range from contemporary YA to dark fantasy. Her novels and novellas are all speculative fiction, but where they have mostly been fantasy or containing magical elements, the most recent novella she finished is more science fiction, involving mechanical time travel (as opposed to magical time travel).

“What is it about fantasy that attracts you?” I asked.

“The magic, mostly. The possibility that there is a little more to life than what we see on the surface.”

Heather has been writing as long as she remembers. She wrote stories as a young child and her interest is writing was fueled even more when local author Sally Odgers visited her primary school. Later, Australian author Isobelle Carmoday also visited the school, and Heather was lucky enough to have a writing workshop with her.

I asked her, “When did you first consider yourself a writer?”

“I tend to be of the opinion that if you write, you are a writer. But the point when it actually felt like others considered me a writer was when What the Tide Brings was accepted into The People’s Library, which was an project by ‘A Published Event’ that was part interactive artwork, part performance library. Just over 100 Tasmanian authors were selected to have their stories/collections/memoirs/poetry etc printed and on display in an art gallery for the month of September in 2018, during which time authors did readings, were involved in conversations, and offered interactive multi-media presentations. It was brilliant.”

She is fortunate to have an office separate from her house in which to write. It overlooks some bushes that the local birds like to visit.

“If I need to pause my writing and have some thinking time I get to look out the window and watch superb fairy wrens, scarlet robins, grey fantails, yellow-throated honey eaters, silver-eyes, and eastern spinebills, depending on the time of day/year,” she said.

She told me that the hardest part of writing for her was about the three-quarter mark.

“It’s the point where I usually know how the story is going to end, and I’m starting to get a bit sick of all this writing, and I just want to get it done, but there’s all this stuff that has to come first to wrap up the story properly.”

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“It was this discovery that led me to write ‘Maggie and the Selkie’ which is the prequel short story to What the Tide Brings,” she explained.

“Are you a plotter or a pantser?” I wondered.

“I’m evolving,” she said with a laugh. “I tend to be a pantser, but after doing some ghostwriting last year, where I was given a plot to write from, I’ve realized how much faster I can get stories written with an outline, so I’m working towards being a little more of a plotter. I’ve seen the term ‘plantser’ recently, which combines the two, so that’s probably a good word to describe what I do.”

In most tales of selkies it is a woman whose magical skin is stolen, who is forced to marry the lucky thief and live a life of misery, pining away for her home in the sea.

But what if the stolen skin belongs to an infant, taken before they have memory of life under the waves?

When Myna’s labour results in a disfigured infant, it doesn’t take much for the midwife to convince her husband the child needs to be dealt with. Years pass, and a healthy child is born. But just as Myna’s life is settling into place, she learns her first-born is still alive, that she and the child are selkies.

Myna has a choice, retrieve her skin and return to the ocean, to the family she never knew and the daughter she’s long grieved for, or remain on land with the husband she loves, and the daughter who can never enter the sea.

This edition of What the Tide Brings is a revised version of the one printed by The People’s Library in 2018.

About the Author:Heather Ewings is an Australian author of speculative fiction. She has a Masters Degree in History, and a fascination with myth and folklore, leading her to write stories that explore the more magical elements of reality. Her first book, ‘What the Tide Brings’, is available now. For more information visit her website at www.heatherewings.com.

Buy the book at Amazon.